Treatment Articles

Sex Addicts in recovery have worked hard to identify their damaging addictive sexual behaviors such as out-of-control porn use, constant sexual hook-ups, or the obsessive pursuit of commercial sex. And they are often able to identify and eliminate other addictions such as drugs or alcohol which co-exist with their primary sex addiction.

In addition to these off limits behaviors, sex addiction treatment and 12-step programs help the addict to be on the alert for “slippery” behaviors. These might include things like driving through the neighborhood where the addict’s favorite sexual massage parlor is located. These are red flags because although they are not forbidden, they can lead down the path toward relapse.

Denial is a form of distorted thinking. In fact it is a masterpiece of distorted thinking. Breaking through denial marks the beginning of addiction treatment. This is just as true for sexual addiction and behavioral addictions generally as it is for chemical dependency.

Without treatment, the set of ideas, rationalizations and beliefs that constitute a system of denial become more and more entrenched and tend to spread, becoming a world view which supports a deceptive and disordered way of life.

Even for a practicing sex addict, there are moments of clear-headedness when he or she suspects that they are engaging in a problematic or pathological pattern of behavior. But that awareness does not hold up. Why? Because denial is distorted thinking in the context of a semi-dissociated (i.e. “checked out”) state.

Addicts are afraid of other people. Sex addiction has been aptly described as an intimacy disorder, a disorder resulting from an avoidance of intimacy and a compartmentalization of one’s life and one’s sense of self. and their early life experience typically makes them feel unlovable and unable to be themselves around other people. Addicts deal with this dilemma by creating a facade or false self that they show to the world. Their real self, including their deepest sexual desires are compartmentalized and hidden.

The enormous global proliferation of online pornography has made a vast array of sexually explicit material available to a large teen audience on laptops, tablets and smart phones. And if smart accessories catch on, you will soon be able to wear your pornography.

Online pornography accounts for such an overwhelming proportion of internet traffic that a new search engine has been created specifically for adult content. It was designed by two former Google employees and searches only for pre-screened adult content that is free of illicit or malevolent intent. It is also designed to protect the user from cookies and other forms of identity tracking. The site was launched on September 15th and according to the founders has “taken off like a rocket.”

Internet porn has long been seen as more readily accessible than riskier and more costly habits like prostitutes, massage parlors or anonymous hook-ups. This in turn makes it more easily available to youth, with the typical first exposure being in the pre-teen years.

These 10 things are not so much myths as they are distortions born of fear and misinformation. When people do not understand sex addiction treatment they may see it as suspect or threatening in some way. This is most often based on very little direct knowledge or a misunderstanding of what they have heard.

The prejudice against sex addiction treatment is much like any other prejudice. It is constantly reinforced by other people who have the same prejudice and it breeds all kinds of misinformation about the feared group. These false beliefs serve to create further distance from that group of people and solidify the prejudice.

It is a scientific fact that when we hold an extreme view, one that is all the way at one end of the attitude scale, we are very bad at making discriminations about the attitudes of people who are at the other end of the scale. We lump the “others” together in an unexamined way. And the more polarized our attitude, the more forcefully we tend to believe it.

People seeking help for sex addiction are anxious to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They are often stunned when I tell them that, even for those who are diligent and motivated, the whole process takes about 3 to 5 years.

Some practitioners might say that, like alcoholism, sex addiction is a chronic condition requiring continuous treatment for life to prevent relapse. I don’t think this is always the case. As I have argued elsewhere I believe that sex addiction recovery is possible and lasting. At some point people can say “I am a recovered sex addict”.

And yet the actual process of getting to that point of solid and reliable recovery seems to take a determined effort over a period of years. There is one possible form of sex addiction which may be different, and I will discuss that further on.

The Six Stages of Sex Addiction Recovery

We commonly think of our sex addict self as bad. And indeed the addict part of us does things that harm others and ourselves and that usually go against our deeply held values. We would like to distance ourselves from this part of us, to stamp it out.

In poetic language we think of the addict as a “dark passenger”. Clinically, we think of the addict behavior as a learned byproduct of early attachment injuries.

But in practice I believe that it is impossible to simply lock that evil twin in a closet or cut it out of us.

Asking a sex addict to take a polygraph seemed ludicrous to me at first. First off, it seems like something you do with a criminal, not with a patient who has come in for help with a sexually compulsive behavior.

I do not take sides on the issue of whether it is better to stay in a marriage or committed relationship with a sex addict or whether it is better to get away and start over. I think there are many valid arguments on both sides depending on the situation.

A reader asked how it feels for a sex addict to lead a double life. This is an interesting question and to some extent the answer is “It depends on the addict.”

New studies in progress using the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), The Millon Clinical Inventory and the Sexual Dependency Inventory suggest that different general types of sexually addictive behavior tend to clump together with different personality types or traits. These types vary from less to more severe.